“Los Olleros no son del Inka”, Craft Specialization and Political Economy in the Andes: A Case Study of the Pampa de Burros Potters, Lambayeque Valley, Peru

Recent archaeological approaches to specialization in early complex societies portray craft specialization as a profoundly political phenomenon. In this view, elites employed specialized craft products to further their political agendas and strengthen their political control; politics is given primacy over economics. In the Andes, this model -partially based on ethnohistoric data on the Inca- has been applied to societies quite distant in time and space from the Inca, commonly without primary evidence from excavated production contexts. This article reviews concrete, primary evidence for the political role of pottery production in the Andes. Using data from the excavations of a Chimú pottery workshop on the Pampa de Burros and a regional study of the distribution of its products in the Lambayeque Valley, it shows that the political model proposes an overly  narrow model of the division of labor. On the Peruvian North Coast, independent specialists manufactured consumer goods for direct exchange, without intervention from Chimú elites or the state. Modeling the Andean past in the image of the Inca prevents us from perceiving the actual social and economic variability that characterized the Prehispanic Andes.

Key Words: Pottery production, craft specialization, division of labor, Peruvian north coast.